I listen to lots of music and never get assimilated into the style of the music itself. I think I liked Dio's stories though they're kind of cheesy by today's standards which is why I've mostly moved on. Still enjoy an occasional Dio song when listening in random via iTunes though.

First, this is first such geek driven museum I know. While museums are all about preserving knowledge, not everyone in geekdom is fan of history, especially history of science. Hopefully it will drive more new geeks to know and study about history - again, especially history of great discoveries. History and understanding people within it could make geeks not only gurus in technologies, but also humans too. Trust me, not all social sciences are worthless:)

Second, this is Tesla. No matter his personal demons (we all have them), he is underlooked in history of technology and science and needs popularity boost, especially after that "ubercapitalist" Edison pushed Tesla from spotlight - just because he got more money.

And we really need to celebrate more such people as Tesla, and less Jobs or Gates.

"We would have not had personal computers as we know them today. We probably would be using 3270 terminals and paying time per hour to dial into a nearby mainframe."

Biggest myth ever spelled about Apple and Jobs. Again, as Gates, he was very successful creating commercial product, BUT ideas was out there already. Xerox labs has been working on prototypes and ideas, there were lot of commercants interested in such kind of thing. Accorn was on the rise in UK, with it's RISC based computing platform. It was everywhere.

So no, Jobs didn't bring us PC as we know them today. But he and Gates made sure that we remember them doing so. Again, this is what I am against. They have their place in history. But they didn't kickstarted this.

"We would still be using CDs instead of MP3 players. Before the iPod, MP3 players were regarded as geek chic if best."

Wow, this is actually Apple fanboism at it's best. iPod was nice step into mass market, but clearly there were better alternatives - they just didn't had that massive marketing machine behind Apple products. And this is in fact ignoring progress - if Apple wouldn't haven't done it, someone else would. Loss compression algorithms were already a reality for very long time at that moment.

"We would still be buying music, for $19.00 an album, for that one good song, from crowded CD stores, as opposed to just tapping/clicking twice on iTMS."

False, again. There were many shops already who has possibility to buy music online - Apple just used his muscle to get permissions from majority of main labels to sell them at one place. In fact, for very long time, ultra monopoly of online sales of iTMS slowed down improvements in this area. So no, haven't been there iTunes and iPod, there would be something in their places. Just cashing in on obvious.

"We would still be using Motorola RAZR clones and saying that a phone that calls and texts is good enough. Apple invented the smartphone as we know it."

Only American could said that, because well rest of the world were more lucky. Nokia had smartphones, even Linux had smartphones when Apple came and again cashed in.

"We would still be using Motorola RAZR clones and saying that a phone that calls and texts is good enough. Apple invented the smartphone as we know it."

Nevermind Nokia already had Internet tablet as experimental hardware, and they were working on useful commercial product when iPad came along.

What can I give to Jobs and Apple that they know how to cash in. They were very convinced in what they were doing. But that's all. In the end, I think world would be better without current Apple strategy.

The entire jist of this rant is that a lot of people had prototypes and pre-Apple products that were on the market but the market never took off until someone with taste showed up and made the thing not suck.

Seriously, I used pre-iPod MP3 players, I used pre-iPhone smart phones and i used pre-iOS tablets.

They REALLY sucked. The OSes were difficult to use, the interfaces were unfriendly and for the price you paid, it was a goddamned joke.

We can all give Nokia or Archos or whoever came before all the credit in the world for having stuff that looked promising but in the end it's Apple who's able to actually execute. Given how many years these devices were on the market before Apple strolled in, except say, the MP3 player market, the notion of what if apple wasn't there is actually inconceivable.

Hell, USB was around for years and several of my motherboards from around 95-97 had USB headers but no one used them. It wasn't until the iMac came around that all changed.

Am I not happy that Apple's being a litigious bully? Sure. Am I even more unhappy that there's a culture in the tech sector that good ideas are just merely a commodity? Damn right I am. A good lawyer and a judge can smack down Apple but no one's willing to fight against tastelessness in the tech industry. Except Apple. And now maybe Vizio? But the reviews of Vizio's gear isn't exactly promising, but it's progress.

"Seriously, I used pre-iPod MP3 players, I used pre-iPhone smart phones and i used pre-iOS tablets.

They REALLY sucked. The OSes were difficult to use, the interfaces were unfriendly and for the price you paid, it was a goddamned joke."

you know why? because the executives of those companies were complete and utter morons. They would have had a brilliant UI and OS if they made them opena nd invited the OSS community to work with them. But no. Diamond wanted to be raging assholes with their RIO and refus

"Seriously, I used pre-iPod MP3 players, I used pre-iPhone smart phones and i used pre-iOS tablets.

They REALLY sucked. The OSes were difficult to use, the interfaces were unfriendly and for the price you paid, it was a goddamned joke."

you know why? because the executives of those companies were complete and utter morons. They would have had a brilliant UI and OS if they made them opena nd invited the OSS community to work with them. But no. Diamond wanted to be raging assholes with their RIO and refused to share with the community. they COULD have owned the market if they did so.

I'm not sure this is the case. I've used and contributed to a lot of open source software. For the most part, they have been very functional and have done the job well. I am not unhappy with how they worked.
But, let's be honest here. The UI sucked. Sucked badly. I have yet to see any OSS that has a usable UI. That's fine for me, I'm an engineer. I can cope with arcane settings and the need to do some things through the command line. Engineers, by and large, cannot develop something that looks good, only s

Seriously, I used pre-iPod MP3 players, I used pre-iPhone smart phones and i used pre-iOS tablets.

They REALLY sucked. The OSes were difficult to use, the interfaces were unfriendly and for the price you paid, it was a goddamned joke.

Can't say a think about the phones and tablets, as I never used them...but cleary you never used the RCA Lyra hard drive players. Pretty sure those were from around 2000, and I would STILL prefer an old one of those to an iPod Classic. Excellent devices. Had a very similar interface to the iPod (sort by album, artist, etc) except they had a better screen, they had a custom equilizer (I STILL don't think iPods have that, do they?), they had FM radio, you could record audio, and you didn't have to use any pro

And in a toss up between Jobs and Gates, I'll give the crown to Gates for truly bringing computing to the masses. DOS on the PC, and later Windows were what got computers into the mainstream. Apple remained a niche rich boy's toy from the very beginning. And even if you're talking about GUI and multimedia...Commodore 64/Amiga & ZX Sinclair anyone?

Xerox Parc invented the mouse-based point-click-drag GUI. Jobs adapted it for personal computers after getting a demo of it from Xerox (http://m.youtube.com/watch?feature=related&v=fJX8NiK2NZM), but it would have become the dominant GUI eventually even if he hadn't. It was simply too efficient as an O/S user interface not to. A number of your other statements similarly overreach. Jobs was indeed a visionary and deserves a great deal of credit for revolutionizing personal computing. Overstating his contr

We would have not had personal computers as we know them today. We probably would be using 3270 terminals and paying time per hour to dial into a nearby mainframe.

As it has been already told, Xerox developed the first PC with GUI. Apple came second after 6 years, with the head of the Xerox PARC team. The Apple's coders made their contribution the computer GUIs, so did the Microsoft team and many others.

We would still be using CDs instead of MP3 players. Before the iPod, MP3 players were regarded as geek chic if best.

Let me point out my friend that every second person I knew had an MP3 player before iPod. You're just joking around, aren't ya?

We would still be buying music, for $19.00 an album, for that one good song, from crowded CD stores, as opposed to just tapping/clicking twice on iTMS.

And other people just simply ripped&compressed the CD's in to MP3/Vorbis and copied around or shared through DC. The sa

First, this is first such geek driven museum I know. While museums are all about preserving knowledge, not everyone in geekdom is fan of history, especially history of science. Hopefully it will drive more new geeks to know and study about history - again, especially history of great discoveries. History and understanding people within it could make geeks not only gurus in technologies, but also humans too. Trust me, not all social sciences are worthless:)

Second, this is Tesla. No matter his personal demons (we all have them), he is underlooked in history of technology and science and needs popularity boost, especially after that "ubercapitalist" Edison pushed Tesla from spotlight - just because he got more money.

And we really need to celebrate more such people as Tesla, and less Jobs or Gates.

I can name a few museums or "centers" that are very geek driven. One of the best of them is the Exploratorium [exploratorium.edu], which is a must visit location for any geek. The Museum of Science and Industry [msichicago.org] in Chicago is another major geek-out site that is well worth the trip. Visiting any number of planetariums are also places that you will generally not regret ever visiting.

That said, I think this museum is likely to become a rival to these other major geek museums and education centers.

You must have never been to the UK. The place is full of geek-driven musea. From coal mines to aircraft factories to Bletchley Park, all can be visited and all are created and run by geeks of various flavours. The same goes for the rest of Europe, though to a lesser extent IMO.

I suspect you are a slashdotter and are reading this now. you have a special gift my friend, and I do not mean mitichlorians. You have the power to affect real nerd-wizard change in the world of muggles.

I contributed to the charity, and remember quite well that it was expected that the land purchase could go through at a lower amount, because the charity could pay all the money up-front. So that would have left a big chunk of money available for the museum construction, and the tower re-building.

The Arts Technica says nothing about the specifics, only the stuff everybody knows already.

Could they/have they set up crowd sourcing of the planning and construction that must come next. I, for one, would happily give a week or two of my time to work on the site. I can bring carpentry, electrical, data management, and project management skills. Any others up for somethinng similar?

What exactly are they going to have at this museum? Seems the property is the only thing they really have, with Tesla's work resting soundly at his other museum abroad. Even then the photo development company covered over most of the original building.

For starters, Tesla came up with the three-phase AC power distribution system that has been in use everywhere in the world for the last hundred years. There's enough material there to fill a few rooms. I imagine we'll see some Tesla coils as well. Plus all the really exotic stuff, such as the proposed wireless power transmission scheme and the marvelous conspiracy theories about its suppression.